Virtual book tours are the new “done thing” when it comes to publicizing novels; so both Rob Kroese, who has just published his first (absurd and entertaining) novel, Mercury Falls, and I thought we’d share our conversation here on WFTC. My second book, Marvellous Hairy, has just been released by Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink; the publisher has described my book as fabulist satire, and I think you could safely apply that label to Rob’s book as well. Mercury Falls is the story of an iconoclastic angel and his unenthusiastic part in the apocalypse; Marvellous Hairy is the story of a surrealist novelist being turned into a monkey by an unscrupulous biotech company.

Mark Rayner: So why angels? ARE they the new vampires?

Rob Kroese: No. Zombies are the new vampires. Angels are the new zombies.

I’m kind of glad you asked that, actually, because it gives me a chance to ask you: what the hell is up with you and monkeys?

MR: It’s not just the monkeys. It’s all primates. In fact, it’s the great apes that are the most fun, because they’re the closest to us genetically. (And that doesn’t include the Barbary Ape, which I’ll grant you has ape in its name, but is more accurately known as a Barbary Macaque. Did you know it’s the only other primate allowed to roam freely in Europe — I mean, apart from humans and English football hooligans?) 

Mostly, I like them because they remind us that we’re animals. With thermonuclear weapons. But still, animals.

So if angels are the new zombies, where do you suppose robots fit into all this? What if Mercury came back in a sequel as a good robot who was going to protect the hero?

RK: Nobody writes about robots anymore, man. Robots are like, so 20 years ago. And 20 years from now. We’re at the nadir of the robot cycle.

It occurs to me, now that you’ve brought up the painful memory of robots, that we both write something close to science fiction that isn’t quite science fiction. Your publisher calls what you write “fabulist satire.” So my questions for you are (1) Can I use that term too, or is it like trademarked or something? And (2) Are we at the forefront of a new literary movement, or are we just not very good marketers?

MR: According to one of the reviewers of Marvellous Hairy, the novel is leading a new WAVE of fabulist satire, and I would say that Mercury Falls is also in the vanguard of this new literary movement. Marketing, like robots, is so 20 years ago. Now it’s all about synergies. And conversations. Hey, let’s write a manifesto!

RK: Ugh. I wrote one of those once. It was like Jerry Maguire, except that in real life, instead of firing you, your boss pats you on the back and then completely ignores you. Bureaucracies are far more insidious in real life than in the movies.

MR: I agree — so did the pat down by your boss prompt the satirizing of bureaucracies in Mercury Falls?

RK: To some extent, I guess. But I’ve always been puzzled by the idea (held by a lot of religious people) that once you die and go to heaven, everything is crystal clear and perfect. But what if things aren’t any clearer in heaven than they are here? What if the angels are all kind of stumbling about in the dark as well? And yet, they’re ANGELS, so they’re supposed to know what’s going on. So they adopt this sort of bureaucratic bluster where they insist that everything be done “by the book,” because the only way they can make sense of the universe is to assume that SOMEBODY knows what’s going on, and that if they just follow the correct procedures, things will work out. And if course, isn’t that basically what people do most of the time?

Marvellous Hairy doesn’t have as much bureaucratic idiocy, but in its place is corporate greed. Tell us how you really feel about gigantic multinational corporations (keep in mind that I work at Google).

MR: Oh, well Google doesn’t count though, because it’s, you know, NOT evil. At least, I think I read that on your mission statement, or was that the Manifesto? I believe that large corporations can be just as bureaucratic as any other large institution, but my main beef with them is they get preferential treatment. Especially in North America and the UK. And really, corporations have just one function — to generate profits for the shareholders. Or, as Rob (Goodman) says in Marvellous Hairy: “But Gargantuan is a corporation: It’s built to make a profit the way that your Jurassic Park T-Rex is built to eat lawyers sitting on a toilet.”

RK: I actually agree with you there (and that’s one of my favorite lines from the book, by the way). In fact, that’s one of the reasons I’m always puzzled when people say things like, “Those insurance companies are only concerned about their profits.” Well, duh. That’s like saying “All that tiger cares about is killing slower animals and eating them.” What exactly do you expect from a tiger? Corporations can be useful things, but they’re not about providing scholarships or protecting the environment or even giving people jobs. They’re about making money. Period.

The paranoia about big corporations in Marvellous Hairy actually reminds me of some of the novels of one of my favorite authors, Phillip Dick. Are you a big Phillip Dick fan? (You can thank me for not asking you if you’re a big fan of Dick.) Are there other authors of whom you think, “Man, if I could just write like that guy (or girl)…”?

MR: Yes, I love Philip K. Dick, and you’re not the first person to make that observation. (And thanks, by the way.) I also love Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins, and if I can get arty for a moment, Italo Calvino. Of course, I’ve only ever read him in translation, so who knows, maybe in the original Italian he’s no good. I also love the sheer gutsiness of Chuck Palahniuk’s writing — not so much the prose — but how he’s willing to pretty much write anything and let the disturbing chips fall where they may. In the world of the theatre, I really admire Tom Stoppard. He also does lots of screenplays, like “Shakespeare in Love”, but I don’t hold that against him. (That movie would have been much better if they’d gotten Travis the Chimp to play the lead, instead of Joseph Fiennes.)

I got a Douglas Adams and Christopher Moore vibe from Mercury Falls. Do you read those guys? Are there other writers who inspire you? Or, who do you really hate as a writer?

RK: I can’t deny the Douglas Adams influence. He really opened the door for novels like Mercury Falls. Beyond him, I have to admit that I’ve (ironically) read very little humor. People keep comparing Mercury Falls to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens, which I had never heard of until I was about halfway through MF. I picked up a copy and read it enough to see that while there are similarities in tone and subject matter, I took a pretty different tack.

The other name that reviewers keep mentioning is Christopher Moore, but I’ve never read anything by him. Lamb is on my list though. I’m hoping it’s good, because otherwise my book really sucks.

I’m with you on Dick and Vonnegut. As for writers I hate. well, there is a ton of bad writing out there, but you can’t really blame bad writers for that. I reserve my hatred for the publishers who keep churning it out and the sheep who keep lapping it up. And unfortunately, it seems we’re headed further in that direction. Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target are warring over the latest book about vampires or Sarah Palin (note to publishers: you know, it wouldn’t be that hard to combine those two genres), and meanwhile, decent writers go completely unnoticed. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to see Mercury Falls on an end cap at Target, but I wrote the book for people who like smart, funny, entertaining fiction. I don’t believe in pandering to my audience; I wrote the sort of book I wanted to read, and if other people want to read it too, that’s fantastic.

Speaking of pandering to one’s audience. You’re Canadian, but I assume that a large percentage of your readership is American. Do you feel yourself accommodating Americans in the way you write (not just in spellings, but in the way you use language in general, such as the use of idioms?)

MR: That’s an excellent question, because yes, I do have a lot of readers in the US. I also have a lot of readers in the UK. And I’m Canadian, and I know for sure that someday some smartass on the CBC is going to ask me why I spell it “color” not “colour”, and aren’t I being a traitor to our nation by not including the completely unnecessary “u”? And I’ll say: “no, I’m not. And why do you do so many interviews with US writers?” And they’ll say, “our listeners are interested” and I’ll say, “well then we’re both hypocrites, aren’t we? Besides, “colour” looks stupid.” And then I’ll go and do something contradictory like spell Marvellous Hairy with two “l”s. (I tried it with three, but Hailry just didn’t make sense.) In terms of idioms, I just go for it, knowing some people will get them and some won’t — on both sides of the pond and north and south of the 49th parallel — I just try not to overdo any idiom.

Do you have a favourite idiom?

RK: I always liked the phrase, “Trying to braze an iron goat.” There are just certain times when no other words are really adequate, you know?

MR: You’re just trying to drive up the stock price of Google aren’t you? I know it. I’ve always liked the idiom “woolgathering’? It is deliciously archaic. Speaking of archaic, did you consult any ancient tomes (other than the Bible) in writing MF? Is there a Jane’s book that covers the various makes of Flaming Swords?

RK: Somebody once said that the great thing about writing fiction is that you don’t have to do any research, and I take that maxim to heart. I Googled “demon names” to find names for some of the characters, and I had to look up the lyrics of Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars,” but calling what I did “research” is like calling Twilight “literature.”

Rob Kroese: I assume you’re a bit more scholarly in your efforts. I believe I read that you’re a university lecturer, in fact. What do you lecture on? And how is lecturing different from teaching or professing? Is your lecturing related to your writing, or is your writing an escape from lecturing?

Mark Rayner: Actually, Marvellous Hairy was delightfully research free, unless you count watching movies and going to whiskey tastings as research. (Though I had studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream in university, and I’ve seen the play a number of times, so I didn’t have to do much there to draw on the structure, themes and characters in the play.)

I teach in the Faculty of Media and Information (or FIMS, at The University of Western Ontario), and I’m a lecturer, not a professor, because I don’t have a PhD. This sometimes makes me feel like I’m the retarded cousin of the family, but I seem to be hold up my end of the conversation with my fully PhuddeD colleagues. And my students seem to enjoy the courses I teach on website design, digital imaging and information architecture despite my lack of a doctorate. I find the intellectual opportunities at FIMS appealing, and teaching is a lovely escape from the solitary insanity of my writing life.

On the topic of whiskey and drinking alone, do you use any kind of stimulant/ depressant/hallucinogen while writing, and if so, can you hook me up? Seriously, though, what’s your writing process?

RK: I believe that fiction should be a reflection of real life, and frankly I can’t get through either without some chemical augmentation. My writing process probably doesn’t even qualify as a process. It’s like the zyphoid process. I could explain it to you, but afterwards you’d be like, “Wait, how is that a process?”

I just write. I start at the beginning. Or the middle. And then I write some more. Then, when I get bored, I make something expode. Then I try to explain to the reader why something just exploded. I throw in some references to Creedence Clearwater Revival, Occam’s Razor or linoleum. Once I have about fifty pages, I realize that thirty pages of it is unusable dreck and delete it. Then I write 30 more pages, which are probably also dreck. This continues until I have a novel.

How about you? Marvellous Hairy feels a little more organized than Mercury Falls, like maybe you kind of knew where you were going when you started writing. Do you use an outline? Also, you seem like such a normal, level-headed guy. What drives you to write bizarre novels about people turning into monkeys?

MR: Really, I seem like a normal level-headed guy? I must be a better actor than I thought.

Marvellous Hairy started out as one of those three-day novel contest manuscripts. You’re allowed to write an outline before you start, so I did a plan for a complete novel, including the subplot and so on. Then I got into day two of the contest, and I ended up under my desk, hugging my knees to my chest and sobbing. (Somewhere in there a lot of scotch was consumed.) And most of the outline got ejected. The manuscript had many good scenes in it, but that’s all they were. Luckily, I had that original outline to go back to, so I could flesh out the first draft. And I definitely knew how the story was going to end before I started. The book I’m working on now started without an outline, and it is just scary not having one. However, I’ve since gone back and figured out everything but the end. I’ll probably just have some guy in a God suit come in tell them all they’re going to Hawaii, where one of them will wipe out on a surf board and nearly die. (It’s because of the cursed linoleum tiki doll.)

Given your process, how many drafts for MF? I like CCR by the way, so those references didn’t go over my head. What’s the deal with linoleum?

RK: It’s funny how few readers realize that linoleum is an archetypal element of storytelling that goes all the way back to Homer. I think it was Homer, anyway. It might have been the dad from Family Guy.

I’m actually reading Angela’s Ashes right now, and there’s a big linoleum component in that book, but did everybody give Frank McCourt shit for that? No, he won the freaking Pulitzer. Page 179: “Declan tells me sit in front of him and if there’s any blaguarding he’ll break my feckin’ neck for he’ll be watching me as long as he’s prefect and no little shit like me is going to keep him from a life in linoleum.” See, linoleum, right there. That’s what that whole book is about. If you don’t believe me, look it up.

As for how many drafts of Mercury Falls I went through. I was actually doing some cleanup on my computer the other day, and I found something like forty different version of Mercury Falls, from various stages in the process. It’s a ridiculously inefficient way to work, but I don’t know how else to do it. I just don’t think I could write from an outline, because my characters would deviate from it at the first opportunity just to spite me.

Incidentally, the very first version was about the planet Mercury falling out of its orbit and destroying civilization on Earth, but then somebody told me they already did that on Thundarr the Barbarian.

So what’s the new book about?

MR: I’m actually working on two right now. The first project I’ll get finished is another fabulist satire. (I DO love that my publisher came up with that term, because now I can describe what I write in one easy phrase — who cares if it is made up? I mean, science fiction was made up. The term “novel” was made up . Did you know that originally novels were called romances until Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein? And someone said, “you know this isn’t really very romantic. Especially the part where Victor strangles the Mother Superior with her own entrails. We should really come up with another term for this kind of thing.” The Church wanted to call them Satanic Verses, but the publishing industry favoured something a little less likely to force them into hiding for the rest of their lives, and more reflective of the fact that they didn’t rhyme, and the meter sucked. Yes that was a “u” in favoured. Deal with it.)

So anyway, the first project is about the coming toaster uprising.

The second project is a little out of my usual comfort zone. It is a historical memoir. Not a memoir of my own life — that’s far too dull to serve as a topic, so I’m writing the memoir of Emily Chesley, a long overlooked Victorian speculative fiction writer who lived in my home town of London, Ontario. I am the “acting” secretary of The Emily Chesley Reading Circle, and we have been meaning to edit her papers into a coherent narrative for some time, and I have volunteered to do it. The Circle’s activities can be followed at their website: emilychesley.com, if anyone is interested.

How about you, what’s up next for, Diesel? Or are you going to go by Rob Kroese now that you’re a famous author of Satanic Verses (or Demonic Drivel, as some of your critics have bleated)?

RK: Sadly, I think I’m going to have to give up the name “Diesel,” because as much as I like it, it was important to me that I have my real name on the
book, so that when my idiot junior high teachers go to Wal-Mart, they’ll see that name glaring at them from the end cap and think, “Wow, I guess he DID live up to his potential. Meanwhile, I’m an idiot and I should shoot myself.”

Wait, what was the question? Oh, what am I going to do next? Well, I’ve been thinking about writing a personal memoir. I was thinking of calling it “Not Living Up to My Potential.”

MR: Excellent title, though I wouldn’t lose sleep about it. If you think about all the billions of people who lived throughout human history, how many could honestly say they lived up to their potential? Buddha? Jesus? I bet if you talked to Christ’s junior high teachers they’d say something like: “sure, he’s famous and I have to give him credit for the whole turning-water-into-wine thing, but let’s face it, he was kind of a non-conformist. I mean you don’t get crucified if you play well with others.” Obviously, Buddha didn’t have junior high teachers. That’s just silly. He dropped out of school to explore the “meditation potential” of certain smoke-able herbs.

Not that I advocate that kind of thing. I definitely think all you kids should stay in school. That said, once you’re out, I think it’s fair to start evaluating success on your own terms. Such as, did I find a good way to end this interview?

Yes I did. And here it is [mp3].

You can find more information about Marvellous Hairy and Mercury Falls at their respective websites. Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink can be found here.

Tweet  Print This Post

Tags: books & writing // Add Comment »